So a little while back , I tried out Blender's Node Editor for the first time, and I realized I was able to composite footage of myself onto an image of the same shot's background (which, as it turns out, would be the same base technique at the heart of the superhuman leaping/falling distances in Clash of the Jedi and ABYDOS ). I decided to try it out using the Keying node, and while it looked pretty cool, it wasn't quite what I had in mind… So, over half a decade later (during my hiatus from the blog in 2019, in fact), I realized I could probably do a better job by now, so I decided to redo the same test. No problem: just fire up After Effects, drop Keylight onto the footage and throw on an adjustment layer to color correct the remaining yellow-green tint… but then I realized an issue. I didn't even have After Effects in 2013; of course I'd be able to do a better job in a more compositing-oriented program! Instead, I decided to go back to Blender. First o...

I've been doing a bit more with After Effects!  Although it isn't a perfect matting, I've still done something.  Anyway, here's my latest one of us Mongolia! Although the background was only a still picture because I couldn't find a video with a camera less than 300 feet off the ground, I was still able to add wind noises, remove the audio noise with Audacity (basically PhotoShop for audio), and create the effect of snow!  Next up will probably be Japan and India! 

On our Big Trip around the world, we've been taking some "recordings!"  As a very generous gift, my grandparents gave me a full greenscreen and lighting set!  After transforming our living room into a studio, I made a few recordings of ourselves and then got to work on After Effects!  Overall, it was easier than I expected--after the work on the Ninjacopter, I didn't have to figure much out. There were a few differences between this Mattework and my first successful greenscreen-ish project .  For this one, you again go to the menu on the far right and choose the "keying" drop-down menu.  This time, I dragged & dropped "color range" onto my video and used the eyedropper tool to select several different shades of green from the background. The trouble, however, was the same one I'd run across with the Ninjacopter last post: some areas, in this case parts of our hair or heads, would disappear if I got too exact--apparently we were standin...

Here it is!  Using the same technique used in Star Wars* (although a bit shakier and with less axes) I've done an actual green screening/mattework using my brother's birthday present! It looks a bit cheesy, but I'd say a lot of the trouble is that the lighting was a bit wrong.  As well, an iPhone, despite recording at Super HD (aka 2.1 Megapixels=not actually that high), isn't quite at the professional level of video cameras.  Either way, the problem was that if I'd try to take away certain shades of green, parts of Oob's Ninjacopter would also disappear.  *Star Wars: instead of moving toy ships on Popsicle sticks like everyone else, Lucasfilm had the cameras moving while the detailed ships stayed still in front of a blue screen. 

I'd thought that I wouldn't manage a blog post for another 4 months due to college, but here it is!  As a student, I now have access to Adobe After Effects (even though technically I didn't have to get it).  After Effects is a professional special effects tool, and from a few brief tutorials I was even able to do something myself... The technical details: First, I made the fire in Blender using the Quick Smoke function on a completely green background.  After that and much struggle in After Effects, I managed to put the green background with fire (or, to abbreviate and make things more confusing, GBw/F) into the live-action bit and greenscreened it:  Search for "keying," drag & drop "Keying-green blur" onto the GBw/F, select the screen color with an eyedropper tool, and there we are!  Except that I couldn't seem to render it in anyway, save having it only open in a web browser, the fire still having the background and therefore covering a g...

Done with Japanese part 二 of 四 (コンピューターで　えを　かくのが　大好きですよ)!!!  Beastly sorry for not blogging so long while I was finishing that up.  However, I have also been working on a completely (and I mean completely ) different aspect of Blender: the Node Editor! The Node Editor can be used for many different things, and a moderately new release of Blender added my favorite node ever (also the only one I happen to know): Keying!  In other words: green screening!!  I couldn't resist but to test this out with a professional semi professional rather small red and white blanket!  It took me a while to figure out how to save the rendering.  Fortunately, my book had the answer: I was connecting the keying node to a viewer node, which gives a preview, when I should have been connecting it to a composite node, which actually makes the image/movie show up on the rendering screen. What I was going for was a Harry Potter-style invisibility cloak effect.  Do I even ...